Poor service delivery in the public sector has been the major concern of stakeholders in the private sector who interface with government agencies regularly.
There have been concerns that low productivity and poor attitude to work in the public service had eroded the revenue-generating capacity of government at all levels.
In view of the threats poor performance of government workers pose on business organisations and their impact on foreign investment attraction into the country, the Federal Government launched an ease of doing business initiative.
Through the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, several executive orders were issued, and civil servants are expected to adhere to them in order to improve the business environment.
Some of these executive orders signed by the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, require public servants to do their work effectively and in a timely manner without creating bottlenecks for individuals and business organisations.
One of such directives is aimed at ensuring timely submission of annual budgetary estimates by all government agencies before the end of July every year to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Budget and National Planning.
The Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Dr. Joe Abah, had canvassed for remuneration of Federal Government workers based on work performance.
He had also confirmed that the performance management system, which would entrench accountability in resource utilisation and results, had been completed and would be piloted before the end of the year.
A human resources professional and Managing Director, Remolaz Management Consult, Mr. Ola Azeez, pointed out that performance-based remuneration was not new to the private sector as it had been a common practice that drove productivity of workers and profitability of business organisations.
He said while the number of years on the job was a main metric used to determine remuneration in the public sector, performance was a major tool for measuring increment in salary in the private sector, adding that despite several reforms, much had not been achieved to improve productivity of government workers.
Azeez said, “Performance is the basic driver in the private sector. In the public sector, once you spend two or three years, automatically, you will have to expect salary increment.
“The public sector we have today is the legacy of the colonial masters and most successive governments have done their best through different commissions to improve performance. Despite the efforts, nepotism and tribalism have been the order of the day and that is why productivity is low.”
According to him, workers who are members of a union in the private sector are able to achieve upward salary review through collective bargaining every two years.
This, he said, was done by considering the financial strength of the company, performance of workers and the state of the economy.
He said, “In an environment that is unionised, the unions do agree across board, either the senior or junior staff union do negotiation through collective bargaining with the key industry players for salary increment. It is done every two years.
“The National Union of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Employees and its senior staff union, for example, usually negotiate with employers in the industry based on the reality of the economy and the corporate performance and affordability of businesses.”
He added, “There must be fairness and equity. There should be comparative indicators. Someone in the administrative department should be earning the same thing with another person in a similar job of the same value, content and quantity.
“People fall into different categories based on different parameters. Performance is the basic driver in the private sector. But overtime, when people grow on the job, the salary structure must also grow with them. But in the present state of the economy, it is more of performance-driven than number of years contributed.”
Azeez noted that some government agencies such as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation operated differently from other MDAs by having a performance management system.
The Managing Consultant, Insel Consulting, Mr. Adedoyin Adebayo, also affirmed that the public service administration in the country was a prototype of the British public service the country inherited after independence in 1960.
However, he observed that the quality of service had deteriorated over the years due to neglect.
To salvage the situation, he said that the government had embarked on many reforms, one of which was the privatisation of public institutions such as the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria.
“The quality began to depreciate after several years of neglecting the public service and civil servants as a whole. This suggests that the system of public service handed down by the colonial masters yielded positive results and deterioration set in after several years of neglect, leading to an apparent failure of public institutions, now requiring several measures such as privatisation,” Adebayo said.
He suggested a measurable performance management system that would highlight the tasks, targets and objectives, measure performance as well as provide improvement measures.
According to him, performance management has been misunderstood, misused, and abused, which had prevented many organisations from maximising their potential.
Adebayo said, “In order to improve public service delivery in Nigeria, there is the need to look towards identification and implementation of an appropriate performance management framework across all cadres of the Nigerian public service.
“It is a common adage in management that what gets measured gets done and what you don’t measure, you can’t effectively manage. There are many reasons why performance management should be introduced in the Nigerian public sector.
“Performance management could have a more profound impact in the public service most especially now that resources are scarce and workers can easily be distracted from what is important by the politics inherent in such institutions.”
However, data on labour productivity from the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that despite weak investment inflows, labour productivity increased by N783.51 in the fourth quarter of 2016 from N713.77 in the third quarter.
The bureau noted that relative stability in power supply during the period was instrumental to the improvement in labour productivity.
The NBS said, “While the overall level of productivity was high, there were several challenges that generally impacted output and labour and indirectly on labour productivity, keeping it below optimal levels.
“Investment in the economy was still relatively low though some government investments were recorded during the quarter. The volume of private investment and foreign direct investments was still considerably low compared to previous years.”
Abah had noted that no country had developed in the last 50 years without a strong, powerful, well-resourced and well-paid civil service.
Recently, while responding to the issue of poor remuneration of public servants, the BPSR boss agreed that the agency’s pay was poor but pointed out that already the public service consumed 70 per cent of the annual budget.
He added that efforts were being made to transform the public service from being a cost centre to a facilitator of growth and revenue generation.
According to him, the National Strategy for Public Service Reforms which had been in existence since 2009 is being updated to include the policy thrust of the current administration and will soon be presented to the Federal Executive Council for approval
Source: Punch
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